What shall we do?

It was an interesting week (w/c 1 June 2009). On Wednesday morning I met up with Vicky Sargent of Socitm who was presenting the latest consolidated feedback from the GovMetric/Socitm Customer Access Improvement Service. Vicky and I are old acquaintances and so had time before and afterwards to compare notes, and I am pleased to say CAIS supports what I have been saying on this blog that we (government or any service provider) need to collect and compare feedback across all channels and use it to improve services across them all in a coordinated manner.

On Thursday morning I was travelling around the beautiful northern reaches of the very rural district that I work in, checking on polling stations. The fact that at one I managed to get a mobile signal by standing in the middle of the village green next to the tall steel maypole might indicate the limited coverage. If an emergency had occurred it would have meant looking for one of the BT K6 phoneboxes that are still around these ‘chocolate box’ villages! So, what about datacomms in these areas? What about modernising elections in these rural village and church hall ballot stations, many of which don’t have disabled access let alone Internet?

Friday saw me at the Yorkshire International Business Convention discussing broadband services in between listening to excellent presentations from John Cleese, Dave Stewart, Tim Sanders, Matt Pritchett, Tim Smit and Tracy Edwards about creativity, innovation and inspiration. One message was to be positive and stay that way.

The deep thoughts left me thinking about what should change, what could change, and how we change it.

My current conclusion is to use the above described multi-channel feedback and remodel services around it. When technology permits other things will be facilitated.

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About me

The blogger is Mick Phythian, a Research Associate at De Montfort University in Leicester, U.K. and former ICT Manager at Ryedale District Council in North Yorkshire, England. He was also a founder member of the Local CIO Council and regional Chair of Socitm.

Any opinions expressed on this weblog are purely those of the author.

He is not the Great Emancipator! The Great Emancipator was President Abraham Lincoln. The blog is so-called because some people perceive e-government, transformational government or, heaven forbid, government to be the emancipator of us all...